


Can I play with madness?

by Zara_Zee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gaslighting, Gen, Horror Elements, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-con sexual touching that may or may not have actually happened, Recreational Drug Use, References to human sacrifice, References to underage sex work, Show-level appropriation of religious mythology, hurt!Dean, show-level violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 11:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12911379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/pseuds/Zara_Zee
Summary: For Dean Winchester, the two months he spent at Sonny’s Home for Boys had been a vacation in the strange land of Normal.  But normal doesn’t last; not for Dean. It’s not something he’s allowed to have. Dean is a freak. An outsider. A troublemaker. And truthfully? He’s tired of fighting it. When the Winchesters’ next job involves the ritualistic murder of high school students in Poughkeepsie, Dean’s dad sends him in undercover. His mission is to infiltrate the jocks and find out if there’s a link between the murders and the school’s sports teams all suddenly winning big. And if that mission involves a little too much partying, a little too much getting down and dirty with cheerleaders, a little too much attitude with teachers, well…it’s all for the good of the job, right?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Written for Fun not Profit, for Live Journal's 2017 SPN_Reversebang challenge.  
>  Jennpbj's Art Masterpost can be found at: https://jenn-bpj12.livejournal.com/790.html

 

**_May 1995_ **

_His head feels heavy. When he looks in the mirror he has devil’s horns, sprouting from just above his hairline. He puts a hand up and touches and the horns feel like the brittle bones of the long dead. He grips one horn firmly and pulls, but it just makes his head hurt._

_Thick black smoke begins to swirl around him. It’s trying to get inside him. He lifts his other hand to ward it off. There’s a knife in his hand. It feels like a part of him and wielding it makes his arm pulse and throb. He’s a freak. A monster. Bad to the bone. He has power. Control. It’s exhilarating._

 

Dean wakes up suddenly, the unsettling dream fading with the light. He notes the pale green paisley wallpaper and mustard-vomit quilt cover. He’s in a strange bed, in a strange room, but that’s not strange. Sammy’s on the far side of the bed, still asleep, and when Dean turns his head he sees his dad sitting at the small round table near the window, cleaning his guns.

That’s not strange either.

“You okay, son?” his dad hasn’t even looked up, but he knows Dean’s awake.

“Yeah,” Dean rolls out of bed.

He pads across to the table in his threadbare boxers and grey tee-shirt.

“Can I?” he gestures at the collection of weapons sitting on the table and his dad nods.

The pine laminate has been peeled away from the table’s edge and the initials BT have been carved into the chipboard and then colored over in red pen. Dean and his dad sit quietly together stripping and cleaning guns, not talking, and Dean finds the repetitive movements comfortingly familiar.

Truthfully, Dean’s not quite sure how he should be feeling right now. Being back with his family—it’s where he should be; where he wants to be. He missed them. But now he misses Robin and Sonny and last night he should’ve been at his first school dance. He might even have gotten lucky with Robin afterwards. Dean smiles softly. Robin wasn’t the first girl he’d kissed, but he hadn’t kissed many and she was the first one he’d been with long enough for it to really start to mean something. His gut aches and his chest feels heavy just thinking about her.

Last night’s car trip is a blur. Sammy was so happy to see him, blabbering on about him being missing on a hunt or something. Dean wasn’t really paying much attention; too busy trying not to cry. Just the thought of crying in front of his dad over something as stupid as a school dance makes Dean feel like a pathetic loser. People are dying. His dad needs him. What he wants doesn’t matter when you look at the bigger picture.

So Dean pushes it all down, all the messy emotions and wayward feelings. He can’t afford them. They make him weak. Vulnerable. Things a hunter can never be. He can’t dwell on the past; he has to focus on the here and now.

And here and now they’re in…Dean frowns. Actually, he has no clue. They drove for a little over an hour, so they’re still in New York State, but where?

He asks his dad and learns that they’re in Poughkeepsie.

“What’s the job?”

His dad methodically cleans out the barrel of a revolver with a cleaning rod and cotton patches as he explains to Dean that for the last two years, a male student from the local high school has gone missing on May 22nd and been found dead a few days later.

The first year, the town went on high alert and the local media had a field day.  The case soon went cold though, and it wasn’t long before the tragedy fell off the front pages and out of people’s minds. 

Another teenage boy going missing exactly twelve months later? And then turning up dead a few days later? _That_ spooked people. And it attracted wider media attention too. Especially with things going so well for the school, otherwise. The previous school year, for the first time ever, all of the school’s sporting teams had won all their respective competitions—by ridiculously large margins too—and _that_ was what had caught John Winchester’s attention.

“Yeah,” Dean agrees. “That’s not suspicious at all. So what are we thinking? Witches?”

“Maybe,” his dad says. “Or someone’s making sacrifices to a pagan god. I managed to get a look at the Coroner’s reports for both deaths. In each case, the victims had been drugged, had their hearts cut out, their skin flayed and parts of their flesh excised, possibly to eat.”

 Dean’s eyes widen. “Holy shit! That’s gross!” He frowned. “Wait a minute…back up. Did you say…Pagan gods? Those are a thing?”

His dad nods. “Aside from the local First Nations Gods, a lot of the immigrants to this country brought their own gods with them and there’s quite a few of them who’ll grant good fortune to whoever makes sacrifices to them.”

“That’s really disturbing,” Dean says, shaking his head. “I mean, monsters I get; they’re just acting on instinct. But people, deliberately doing something like this? That’s crazy, man.”

His dad nods and opens the Hoppe’s Number 9. “Whoever is doing this, whether it’s pagan god worshippers or a coven, they’ve gotta be connected to the school. So I want you in there undercover. I want you cozying up to the jocks; it’ll give you a chance to put those wrestling skills,” his dad’s nose wrinkles, like he just smelled a ghoul, “that you learned at your last school to some _good_ use.”

Dean swallows. He had felt kind of proud about his Champion Plaque in Wrestling, but his dad’s right. If he can’t use his skills to be a better hunter, what use are they?

“Yeah,” he says, meeting his dad’s eyes. “Sounds like a plan.

His dad smiles, proud, and Dean wants to keep that look on his face for as long as possible.

“Good,” John Winchester says, with a nod. “I’ve already got you enroled up at the school. You’ll start Monday, see out the school year; hopefully learn something useful so we can stop these sons of bitches before they take another life.”

“Yessir,” Dean says.

His dad pins him with a look. “We’ll spend the weekend training hard. You’re bound to have got soft holidaying with the civilians; we’ll need to get you back into hunting shape.”

Dean swallows again. Only John Winchester would consider two months in a Home for delinquent boys a holiday. Still, he’s not entirely wrong; it’s been a while since Dean did any hunter-training.

So Dean simply nods and gives his old man another _yessir_. It gets him another proud smile and Dean almost forgets how happy he’d been at Sonny’s.

Almost.

 

_There’s heat and fire and the stench of burning flesh. There’s a metal rack and chains and a woman fastened to it with metal rods through her flesh. He peels her skin off with his knife and she screams and screams and he can’t even feel bad about it, because she deserves to be here and besides, he knows what it’s like on the other side of the knife and he’s not going back to that, not ever. He’s the one wielding the knife now. He’s the one in control._

 

“Hello? Earth to Dean?” Sammy’s hand’s waving in front of his face and Dean blinks and almost stumbles.

“Watch it,” he snaps.

Sam’s face screws up, pissed. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said for the past five minutes!”

Dean shakes his head to clear it and looks down at his little brother. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t sleep well. Weird dreams.”

“Yeah,” Sam nods thoughtfully. “Being lost on a hunt must’ve been scary.”

Dean shrugs. His dad told him the story he’d concocted for Sam, to explain Dean’s absence, but Dean doesn’t want to erase that part of his life, so he’s avoiding talking about it as much as possible.

“I was fine,” he says. “I’ve got mad survival skills, so it was just like a holiday.”

Sam doesn’t look convinced, but he nods.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he says. “I like staying with Uncle Bobby, but I missed you. And I bet Dad would’ve forgotten yesterday was my birthday if you hadn’t been here to remind him.”

“Nah,” Dean says in his surest tone. “He would’ve remembered.”

The look Sam gives him is sceptical, but they’ve arrived at the middle school, so Dean walks him in and leaves him with the school’s receptionist to get settled, before continuing over to the high school.

He’s sent to see the Guidance counsellor, Ms Sanchez, who looks at his transcripts, talks to him about his previous classes, and helps him put a timetable together. She also gives him a lecture about ‘fresh starts’ and ‘staying out of trouble’, before finally giving him a locker combination and a timetable. Some geeky kid who’s introduced to him as a ‘student ambassador’ comes along to give him the ten cent tour and take him to his first class. The kid looks up at Dean, takes in his frayed jeans, with tears at the knees that have nothing to do with fashion, his scuffed combat boots, and the slightly too big leather jacket Dean had borrowed off his dad, and gets a pinched look on his face.

He shows Dean the cafeteria and points out a restroom and then takes him to where the sophomore’s lockers are. Dean shoves his backpack in his locker and pulls out a pen and a notebook before slamming the door closed.

The geek kid—Thomas—raises an eyebrow. “What’ve you got second period?”

Dean consults his timetable. “Uh, Algebra 2.”

Thomas’s eyebrow gets even higher and Dean’s eyes narrow, because fuck Thomas and the high horse he road in on. He’s _good_ at math, completed Algebra 1 in middle school and everything.

“Just so you know,” Thomas says, “we’re completely out of Algebra text books. We’re already sharing one between two so you won’t be able to take one home for studying.”

To Dean, that just sounds like a legitimate excuse not to do homework.

When they get to the classroom, Dean has to move his desk and share a math book with two other students. The teacher—Mr Lewis—is a real dick about it too.

“Your parents were told you were joining the school so late that you’d have to supply your own books. Why didn’t you come equipped?”

“We just got into town,” Dean says.

Mr Lewis harrumphs.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that education’s not a priority in your family, given your…recent place of residence.”

Dean feels everyone looking at him, judging him, wondering what Mr Lewis means.

US History is no better. Mrs Miller makes him stand up and tell everyone a bit about himself.

“My name’s Dean Winchester,” he says. “We moved here because of my dad’s job. At my last school I was on the wrestling team.”

By lunchtime there’s a lot of whispering going on.  Dean gets a tray and eats by himself. Mac’n’cheese; bright yellow and pretty good actually, with lime jello for dessert.

No one sits at his table. A lot of people stare. Dean decides to go and find a quiet spot outside where he can take a breather away from all the attention.  He stands up and steps away from the table and finds himself face-to-face with two big guys wearing letterman jackets.

“Winchester, right?” one of them says.

“Right,” Dean agrees.

“Hear you were on the wrestling team at your old school.”

“Yeah. I was this year’s Sullivan County 135 pound wrestling champion.”

The jocks look a little impressed.

“I also hear you just got outta juvie,” one of them says.

Dean laughs. “Is that why no one wanted to sit near me? No. I didn’t just get outta juvie.”

“No?”

“No. We just move around a lot, is all. My old man…” he trails off with a shrug.

“Yeah,” one of the jocks nods like he gets it and sticks his hand out. “Name’s Jason. I was this year’s Dutchess County 146 pound wrestling champion.”

“Dean,” Dean shakes his hand.

The other guy introduces himself as Shawn.

Dean grips his hand too.

“You should come talk to Coach Rockford,” Shawn says. “He’s always on the lookout for new talent and we didn’t have anyone wrestling in your category this year. If you wanna meet up after sixth period I can introduce you to Coach, let him get a feel for how you could fit into the team next year.”

“Awesome,” Dean says.

Jason asks him what High School he was at when he won the County belt for his division. Dean tells him, and Jason and Shawn exchange a loaded look.

“What?” Dean says.

“Got a cousin lives out that way,” Shawn says finally. “That’s the school where the guys from the Reform Home go.”

Dean rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Well. This is awkward. What should he tell them? What will gain him the most credit with these guys?

He settles for grinning unrepentantly. “Yeah, well, you asked me if I’d just got outta _Juvie_.”

“Same thing,” says Jason.

“No it ain’t, “Dean says sharply. “And before you ask, I’ve never been in Juvie, but I know guys who have. A place like Sonny’s is a big step down from that. No locks on the doors for a start.”

Shawn nods. “So what did you do to end up there?”

“Does it matter?”

Shawn shrugs. “Could do.”

Dean thinks for a moment and decides to lie. “Was walking home drunk after a party, got picked up by a cop who didn’t appreciate my smart mouth. He got a little rough, I punched him, gave him a black eye.”

The truth is a little more embarrassing. With dad out of town for a couple of weeks on a hunt, it was up to Dean to manage the finances. Dad left enough money to cover the bungalow’s rent and enough to cover food if Dean got real creative with mac’n’cheese, but the possibility of his youngest son making the school soccer team and needing boots? Materials for a school science project? Those kinds of things never made it onto John Winchester’s radar, so it would never occur to him to put money aside for it.

Dean has ways of making money though; a legitimate job if he can get one, but if not, then pool hustling or a back room poker game. And if he’s really desperate, going to his knees in some dirty back alley can bring in some quick cash too. That last one only really works in the bigger towns and cities though; it wasn’t something he could do in a little country hamlet.

So Dean had found himself a back room poker game in the hope of earning enough bank to cover Sam’s soccer boots—and lost all of their food money. He’d eeked out the food they had left, going without himself as much as he could until things got desperate, and then he tried to lift a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread from old man Hewlett’s store. In retrospect, trying to stuff a loaf of bread inside his jacket had been a stupid idea. Steve caught him red-handed, which was utterly humiliating, and when Deputy Billy turned up, not only had he been a self-righteous dick, he’d tried to pull that whole ‘scary bad cop’ thing on Dean, got real rough and pushy with him and copped Dean’s fist to his face for his trouble. That, of course, meant being handcuffed and arrested, which was never a good time, and then he’d been sent to Sonny’s when Dad decided to let him rot for his stupidity. 

But the lie he tells instead of the real story makes the jocks snigger and smack him on the back, and a moment later he’s sitting with them at their table, being introduced to the soccer team’s star striker, Chris; the football team’s starting quarterback, Josh; and Jenny, Monique, Jacinta and Isabella, who are all cheerleaders. Jenny looks at him from beneath her eyelashes and leans toward him when he talks. He doesn’t say much, just answers their questions with a carefully-constructed, laid-back nonchalance. 

After lunch Dean has Spanish, which he sucks at, followed by Auto Shop.

The guy who takes Auto Shop is one of those teachers who likes students to call him by his first name; Doug in his case. He’s a bit older than Dean’s dad, heavyset and greying already, with a big droopy moustache, but he’s happy to let the students in the class do their thing with minimal interference, and his only classroom rules are no yelling and no cussing.

Today’s lesson is changing transmission fluid, something Dean’s done several times before with his dad and he settles happily into the rhythm of working on a car.

There’s only one girl taking Auto Shop, and she’s buried under the hood of the Camaro right next to Dean’s. Half an hour into the class Dean’s calmly laying bolts on a shop towel and humming Metallica when there’s a muffled clang from underneath the hood of the car beside him and then he hears:

_“Goddamn mother-fucking son-of-a-bitching bolt!”_

“Language,” Doug says mildly.

The girl straightens up, shaking her hand and grimacing.

“You okay?” Dean asks.

She nods.

“You need a hand?”

She scowls. “Why? You think I can’t do it coz I’m a girl?”

Dean shrugs. “I watched my old man and my uncle spend over an hour trying to undo a real stubborn bolt on the engine mount of a Jeep. They ended up putting so much torque on the wrench that they stripped the damn bolt,” he grins. “Man, was my dad pissed.”

The girl stares at him with narrowed hazel eyes, hands on hips. She’s tall, with short, dirty blonde hair and a square, heavily-freckled face. Everything about her screams _competent_. With a side order of _I can and will kick your ass._

“I’m willing to give it a shot if you wanna take a break,” Dean says. “If not,” he shrugs, “no big deal.”

 She harrumphs and then nods. “Sure. Okay.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Don’t do me no favors,” he says, but he says it with a smile and reaches for the wrench in her hand. “I’m Dean by the way.”

“Yeah, I caught that when Doug introduced you at the start of class.”

Sarcasm too. Dean approves.

“Me telling you my name?” he says, keeping his tone light and playful, “that was actually a subtle hint that _you_ should tell me _your_ name.”

The girl just rolls her eyes, so Dean lets it go and turns to the engine.

It takes every ounce of his strength to get the bolt to move so much as quarter of an inch.

“It’s Crystal,” the girl says suddenly.

Huh? Dean frowns. What’s crystal? He turns to the girl, but the question dies on his lips when he sees her raised chin and the challenge in her eyes. Crystal is her name. Wow. Dean can’t imagine a name that would suit her less, because delicate, fragile glass she sure ain’t. Something of what he’s thinking must show in his face, because she glares at him and mutters something under her breath.

Dean settles for nodding and turning back to the engine.

He finally gets the bolt loose and holds it up triumphantly.

Crystal rolls her eyes. “S’pose you think you’re all that now,” she says.

Dean spins, holding the bolt high above his head. “I’m Batman,” he says, deadpan.

Crystal tries to stifle a grin. “You’re insane.”

Dean nods. “It’s been said.”

After class, Dean walks out of the workshop and toward the main building with Crystal. She’s not a big talker, but he does manage to learn that she’s only been in town six months herself.

Crystal heads off to her sixth period class and Dean consults his timetable and then heads to his own class.

After English (and another teacher who berated him for not having the book the class is currently studying) Dean meets up with Shawn at the lockers.

“I hear you were talkin’ to Crystal in Shop,” Shawn says.

“So?”

“So don’t. She’s a foster kid. Fugly too. And you don’t wanna make Jenny jealous do you? She told Monique that she thinks you’re hot,” Shawn waggles his eyebrows and elbows Dean in the ribs. “Dude, you are _so_ in. Jenny’s always had a thing for bad boys.”

Dean’s stomach is suddenly filled with butterflies and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s not excitement he’s feeling; it’s anxiety.  

This time last week he was snuggled up on the sofa at Sonny’s with Robin wrapped in his arms. They’d been kissing and yeah, he’d been turned on, but more than that, he’d been content.

Now, suddenly, he’s got to tamp down the memory of how awesome he’d felt with Robin, and start something with Jenny, for the good of the hunt. Dean has sucked dick for cash. Letting your body be used intimately as a job is a bit of a mind fuck; sex loses its magic when it’s work. He doesn’t want dating girls to start feeling the same.

But he has a job to do and he doesn’t want to disappoint his dad again.

So Dean pastes on his best wolfish grin and says, “Sweet, man. Can’t say hitting that would be a hardship.”

He and Shawn bump fists and Shawn seems satisfied by Dean’s fake enthusiasm.

\--

Coach Rockford is a huge, bald black man. Dean figures he was probably fit back in the day, before life behind a desk and too much of his wife’s cooking made him go to seed. Coach keeps a picture of his wife on his desk, along with a photograph of a girl in her early twenties wearing a mortarboard and gown.

Coach Rockford is pleased to meet Dean and eager to have him on the team next year.  He seems like a nice guy and Dean can’t detect any obvious signs that he’s a member of a coven or that he might be the type to sacrifice kids to a pagan god. Of course, if he was the type, he’d probably keep that stuff hidden. Dean should probably break into the school one night and go through the offices of everyone in the Sports Department.

He parts company with Shawn and heads down to the Middle School to collect Sam.

Sam just about falls over himself telling Dean all about the deaf girl in his homeroom and how everyone in his year level is learning ASL so they can talk with her. He’s wildly enthusiastic about some of his classes and dubious about others.

“They’re doing _Tuck Everlasting_ in English,” he says. “I already did that twice.”

“Sweet,” Dean says.

He gets an epic bitchface in response.

“It’s not _sweet_ ,” Sam says scornfully. “It’s boring. I want to learn new stuff.”

“So help Dad with the research for this case.”

Sam scowls. “It’s not the same. That’s not _school_.”

“I know. It’s a million times better than school. It _means_ something. It’s learning something that saves lives!”

 “Why does it always have to be us?” Sam says. His shoulders are hunched, but his tone is fierce. “Why can’t we just be normal for once!”

Dean thinks of Robin and Sonny and how good it felt to hold up that wrestling belt. He thinks of his mom and pb&j sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

“We _had_ normal,” he says. “For a while. And then some monster came along and killed Mom. Normal doesn’t last, Sammy. And once you know what’s out there? You gotta do everything you can to save people.”

“And who’s gonna save you?” Sam says. “One day you and dad are gonna go on a hunt and you’re not gonna come home.” 

Dean slings an arm around his little brother’s shoulders and pulls him in for a hug. “Not gonna happen,” he says. “Dad’s the best hunter there is. And we got plenty of back up to help out if we need it: Uncle Bobby, Caleb, Pastor Jim,” he lets go of Sam and ruffles his hair. “And we got our own Brainiac to help us with research, so what could go wrong?”

Sam smiles weakly, but his eyes are still filled with worry. “I know you’re hunting something at your school,” he says. “I hate it that you don’t get to be safe, even there.”

“Don’t sweat it, ‘bro,” Dean says. “I’m a genuine bona fide hero.”

Sam rolls his eyes, but his smile is a little more genuine now.

“Well until you find the monster and kick it in the ass, I’m gonna need books. They don’t have enough to go around.”

“Just share with somebody else.”

Dean gets another bitchface. “That’s okay in class, but what about homework? How am I meant to do A-grade homework if I don’t have the text book at home?”

Dean sighs and says he’ll see what he can do.

Dad’s home when they get back to the motel. He’s organized a trundle bed for Sam, he’s paid extra to have a mini-fridge brought in and he’s bought some food; cereal, bread, peanut butter, boxes of mac’n’cheese and some microwave dinners.

Dean tells his dad that they need money for school books, but his dad just shakes his head.

“That job I had lined up fell through,” he says. “And I don’t want to risk pulling a credit card scam when we could be here for a month; it’s too risky. So until I can find something, we’re really going to have to tighten our belts.”

“Shocker,” Sam mutters, rolling his eyes.

Dad glares at Sam. “You think I wanted this to happen? I’m trying, Sam. In the meantime…”

Dad’s eyes meet with Dean’s, imploring.

Dean nods. “I’ll look around too. See if I can find something.”

Dad’s smile is approving and grateful. “I can always count on you, Son,” he says.  

Luckily for Sam, Dad misses his epic bitchface.

Later, when Dad’s asleep on the motel room’s one easy chair, with an empty tumbler clasped loosely in his hands, Sam nudges Dean with his foot.

“Funny how there’s always money for Wild Turkey,” he says.

Dean decides to ignore him and Sam sighs and shakes his head.

 

_He’s singing karaoke. He’s terrible and people are booing, but he doesn’t care. Dean does what he wants. He’s his own man. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of him.  He’s free. He doesn’t owe anything to anyone. It’s thrilling and it makes him feel more alive than a technically-dead man has any right to. Later, when he looks in the bathroom mirror, his eyes are obsidian black orbs._

 

Dean comes up fighting when someone pokes him in the side.

“Dude!” Sam says quietly, backing off and holding his hands out in submission. “You were making weird moaning noises.”

It’s gone six am so Dean gets up and goes for a run. He’s sure been having some weird dreams lately. The run clears his head and he showers when he gets back. The bathroom fan doesn’t work and the room’s like a sauna when he steps out of the shower cubicle. He wraps a towel around his waist and then rubs at the mirror until he can see his reflection. Green eyes stare back at him.

_You get one shot at this game, Dean, and when you look in the mirror, you want the guy looking back at you to be his own man._

Dean swallows hard and turns away.

In English, he doesn’t bother writing down the homework, because Sam’s right; without the book at home, there’s no point even trying to write a paper.

He gets told off by Mr Lewis for not having done his Algebra homework. Apparently, Dean was supposed to copy out the twenty problems that Mr Lewis assigned them yesterday from the shared text book. Mr Lewis threatens him with detention if he doesn’t have all his homework done by tomorrow. Dean manages to get some of it done in class, but he doesn’t stay back to copy the rest of the questions down to complete at home, because that would eat into his lunch break and screw that.

“Dean!”

Dean turns to find Crystal coming up beside him. She’s in his Math class and just got to watch Mr Lewis tear strips off him. He’s not supposed to talk to her if he wants to stay cool with the jocks and the cheerleaders, but Dean can’t bring himself to be a dick to her.

“I just wanted to let you know that you might be eligible to get free books from The Salvation Army Community Center. If you were interested.”

That’s actually helpful. Dean isn’t too fazed about books for himself, but Sam’s going to have an absolute bitchfit if he can’t do his homework.

“Okay,” he says to Crystal. “Thanks.”

Crystal gives him a shy smile. “I know the Youth Worker who manages the program. I can introduce you if you like.”

Dean shakes his head. “That’s okay.”

Crystal shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

Simultaneously, her eyes widen, an arm comes down around Dean’s shoulders, and Shawn says, “Hey D-Man,” into his ear.

Dean manages not to roll his eyes. _D-Man_ is at least a step up from _D-Dawg_.

Jason comes up on Dean’s other side and gives him a friendly punch in the arm. “S’up.”

“What did I tell you about talkin’ to losers?” Shawn adds, staring coldly at Crystal.

“Screw you,” Crystal snaps. “I was just leaving anyway.”

She turns to go, but not before Dean sees the hurt in her eyes. Hurt that’s carefully covered by a layer of anger.

It’s probably not smart and it certainly won’t help him work the job any easier, but Dean finds himself echoing Crystal.

“Yeah, screw you,” he shrug Shawn’s arm off his shoulders. “I don’t need your permission to do squat. I’ll talk to whoever the hell I wanna talk to, _capisce_?”

Shawn’s eyes narrow and he stares at Dean for a moment before nodding, curtly.

“Hey Crystal?” Dean calls out.

She glances over her shoulder at him.

“I’ll meet you after sixth period, at the lockers. You can take me to that shop you were talking about.”

She nods and continues down the corridor.

“She taking you to get your first bra, Winchester?” Jason says snidely.

Dean gets him in a headlock and doesn’t let go until Mr Lewis comes and threatens him with detention (again) if he doesn’t stop ‘roughhousing in the corridor’.

\--

Dean meets Crystal at the lockers as promised and they walk to the Middle School together and collect Sam. Sam is a little shy around Crystal at first, but the longer she stays silent, the more he relaxes and pretty soon he’s talking a mile a minute at Dean, telling him that he’s learning the alphabet in ASL, and how to say his name. Crystal shoots Dean a bemused look over the top of Sam’s head and Dean shrugs.

“Sounds awesome, Sammy.”

Sam beams and then frowns. “This isn’t the way home. The motel’s that way.”

Crystal looks surprised. “You’re living in a motel?”

Sam looks abashed, but Dean just nods.  “Yeah. The New World Motel on Main.”

“That’s good. You got a good shot at getting the free books if it looks like you’re in unstable accommodation.”

Dean frowns. “We’re not gonna get reported to Child Services are we?”

Crystal shakes her head. “You know what to say to social workers to stay under the radar, right?”

Dean gives her a hard look and she stares back coolly. “I know you’ve been though some shit,” she says. “And you’ve got that look; like someone who’s grown up learning how to dodge the system.”

Dean concedes the point with a tilt of his head.

The Salvation Army Community Center is a fifteen minute walk from the Middle School. It’s on Main Street, and only about a ten minute walk from the motel they’re living in.

The books and other school resources are in a small room at the back of the premises. The front of the building is basically a big hall, and there’s a line of adults shuffling toward a table, where a woman checks their ID, then has them sign a form, before giving them something in a paper cup that looks like it might be orange juice.

“Methadone,” Crystal whispers to Dean.  

In the back room, Crystal introduces Dean and Sam to Gavin, the Youth Worker who manages the school-book program, among other things. Dean tells him that they’ve just moved to town with their Dad, but the job he’d had lined up had fallen through and although he was confident he’d get another one soon, in the meantime they have no money for books. He mentions that they’re living at The New World motel and Gavin asks Crystal if she’d mind stepping outside for a moment.

Gavin asks a lot of questions once she’s gone and Dean and Sam carefully tread that fine line of appearing disadvantaged enough to get help, but not so disadvantaged that they’re reported to Child Services. Gavin seems like a decent guy and he’s obviously angry that neither the High School nor the Middle School are properly resourced. He has a lot to say about school district configurations and funding and the way the system short-changes kids from poor families and Sam nods along earnestly and Dean folds his arms over this chest and stares at the floor, but in the end they get most of the books they need free of charge.

Crystal is waiting for them outside.  Dean decides to take her to _Wendy’s_ as a thank you and they all sit down in a booth and eat chilli dogs and watery coke and Dean nearly chokes on his drink when he spots the woman on the street corner. Crystal follows his gaze and her lips thin.

“This whole area’s a stroll,” she says. “Ain’t usually anyone out this early, but,” she shrugs eloquently.

Dean bites at his bottom lip and studies the woman from underneath his eyelashes, assessing the way she’s presenting herself with a professional eye.  She’s wearing knee high black boots, a tight black hoodie and the skirt of her red dress barely covers her ass. Dean doesn’t make much of an effort with his appearance if he has to pick up tricks. He’s found that dressing in his rattiest clothes and looking young and desperate is enough to bring in the punters.

“The trannies hang out up the other end of the street, near the theater,” Crystal says, “but I don’t think there’s too many _regular_ ass-for-cash guys working Main Street.”

Dean’s adrenalin spikes. “Why are you telling me this?”

Crystal shrugs. “Just making conversation.”

But she’s looking at him like she knows and, fuck, he can’t have those kind of rumors starting about him, he’s got a job to do here.

“What’s a tranny?” Sam asks.

“Shut up, Sam,” Dean says and Sam shrinks back into his seat, away from Dean’s harsh tone.

Dean glances at his little brother and feels like shit. The kid’s got the kicked puppy eyes happening.

“Dean?” Crystal touches his forearm and he jerks away. She holds her hands up in silent apology and yeah, get a grip Dean and quit acting like a jumpy civilian who just saw their first poltergeist.

“I ain’t named after champagne glasses or chandeliers, you know,” Crystal says. “My mom was doing meth when she got knocked up with me. She tried her best to be a good mom, but her life was pretty messed up. And when your life’s messed up, you just gotta do what you gotta do, you know? And there ain’t no shame in that.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Dean says again.

Crystal smiles and repeats her previous answer: _just making conversation_.

\--

Back at the motel, Dad is pleased that Dean managed to get them some free books and that he’s making progress with the jocks. He’s in a good mood. Thanks to a guy who knows a guy who was in the Marine Corps with John back in the day, he’s managed to land himself a job as a security guard down at the municipal precinct. He’ll be starting tomorrow, afternoon shift, starting at 3.00pm and finishing at 11.00pm.  

Now that he’s almost gainfully employed again, Dad splurges on Chinese Takeout for supper. Dean manages to get some of his homework done and he’s extra nice to Sam too, to make up for being a dick earlier. All up, it’s a good evening.

_He notices the large jaguar first; its sharp, bared teeth, its rippling muscles. It growls – maybe a warning, maybe a greeting, as he approaches the obsidian mirror that stands before the altar. Despite the smoke that’s pouring from the mirror, he’s able to see his reflection. He’s dressed in nothing but a loin cloth. He’s wearing a necklace; a disc made from some sort of shell, and he’s wearing a headdress made of white turkey feathers. In one hand he holds a spear. There are black and yellow stripes on his face. The mirror shakes and a disembodied voice begins to speak low and terrible:_

**_I am the God of the Night Sky, Lord of temptation, sorcery, prophecy and beauty. I am the Patron of the Warrior; of chaos and discord. I can cleanse you of your guilt or tempt you into self-destruction._ **

_The jaguar roars and Dean cowers._

**_You will be mine Little Hunter_ ** _, the voice intones._

 

Dean wakes up in a cold sweat. He remembers a big cat and a scary voice, but the details of the dream are fading fast. Fuck. It’s left him shaking and really fucking freaked out.  

He started smoking while he was at Sonny’s; just socially. It wasn’t a thing, he isn’t addicted, but he could really go for a cigarette now. Instead he gets up quietly and finds his dad’s Wild Turkey, on the floor beside the armchair. He drinks straight from the bottle, takes a few good deep swallows, and then a few more. He goes back to bed and lies awake for a couple of hours, listening to Sammy breathe and his dad snore. When he finally falls asleep, his slumber is dreamless.

\--

Dean’s expecting some kind of fallout from the way he spoke to Shawn and Jason yesterday, but if anything the guys (and the girls) are friendlier than ever. At the beginning of Lunch, Shawn, Jenny and Monique drag him to meet the Head of the Sports Department, Mr Sanchez.

Sanchez’s eyes narrow and he looks at Dean with an intensity that makes Dean pretty uncomfortable.

And then Sanchez breaks into a grin.

“I see what you mean, Jenny. He is a _very_ attractive young man.”

“Mr Sanchez!” Jenny pouts and blushes and Mr Sanchez laughs.

“He’ll do very nicely,” Sanchez adds. And then turns to Dean. “You’ll definitely be an asset. I’m positive you’re going to help The Sports Department do well again next year. Welcome to the team, Dean. You kids better _vamoose_ now, before the Cafeteria stops serving food.”

As they walk down the corridor, Jenny links her arm with Dean’s and presses in close against him.

“The food here sucks,” she says.

Dean shrugs. “It ain’t so bad. I’ve had worse.”

Jenny’s eyes widen. “In juvie?”

“I wasn’t in…” Dean sighs. “The food at Sonny’s was actually really good. But I’ve been to a lot of different schools over the years and there’s definitely schools with worse food.”

Jenny wrinkles her nose. “Well I brought something from home today,” she peeks up at him from beneath fluttering eye lashes. “Dean? Will you join me for a picnic?”

Dean glances across at Shawn who grins and gives him a surreptitious thumbs up.

“Sure,” Dean says.

Jenny has a cooler bag and a picnic blanket in her locker. They go outside and settle beneath a big American Sycamore.

“I hope you like meatballs,” Jenny say, handing him a hotdog roll filled with sliced meatballs.

Dean takes a bite and almost moans. The meatballs are amazing; the ground beef is tender with no fat or gristle and the mixture is rich with onion and spices. And the ketchup? Dean needs to know what brand this is because Heinz definitely doesn’t taste this good.

“It’s homemade,” Jenny says. “My mama’s half Italian, half Mexican, and she loves to experiment in the kitchen.”

Dean had a couple of cooking lessons at Sonny’s because Sonny was a firm believer in the idea that even if he could do nothing else, a man should know how to work a grill. Dean can now make a mean homemade bacon cheeseburger, if he does say so himself. Still, he draws the line at asking the girl he’s just met for her mama’s ketchup recipe.

The meatball sandwiches are followed by chocolate cake, washed down with hot chocolate from a thermos.

It’s a warm day, Dean’s been well fed and he’s lying comfortably on a tartan blanket in the shade of a cool tree. Jenny manoeuvres him so that his head’s on her lap and begins to card her hand through his hair. It’s nice. Dean feels happy. Floaty. 

Jenny smiles down at him. She has a pretty smile. “I like you, Dean,” she says.

She leans down and her lips are soft against his. Dean thinks of Robin and his heart pulses with guilt, but he keeps kissing Jenny. Low level arousal is thrumming through his veins. This is good. Kissing girls is good.

Dean is restless and unfocused during his afternoon classes. US History is boring; nothing but pompous men in funny hats. Mr Lewis is his usual dickish self in Algebra and Dean isn’t quite sure how he avoids a detention for his still-unfinished homework 

The next day, Jenny brings lunch again. The others have also brought in lunch from home, so it’s nine of them sitting beneath the Sycamore tree eating an amazing array of home cooked food.

It becomes their thing and Dean loves it. His new friends are awesome. They treat him like some kind of rockstar, always interested in what he has to say, never thinking his dreams for the future are stupid. He’s happy. And he wants his friends to be happy too.

\--

There’s a party at Josh’s place Friday night and Jenny just assumes that Dean will be her date. She’s upset when he tells her that he can’t go.

“But this is the football team’s big end of year party,” she pouts. “It’s just expected that all the cheerleaders will go.”

Dean doesn’t quite see what the problem is. “You can still go. But I’ve gotta watch my little brother.”

Jenny’s eyes well up with tears. “I can’t go without you!”

Fuck. Dean hates it when girls cry.

Sam will probably be okay by himself for a few hours. And, really, this _is_ for a hunt, so dad shouldn’t have a problem with Dean leaving Sam alone.

“Give me your number,” he says. “I’ll figure something out and call you.”

Jenny smiles tremulously. “Really? You’ll come to the party with me?”

“Yeah.”

Jenny’s smile brightens and she backs him against the bank of lockers, stands on tiptoes and kisses him thoroughly.  They break apart to the sound of cheering, clapping and wolf whistles and Dean’s pretty sure he’s blushing when he looks up and meets Crystal’s eyes across the corridor. Her eyes are narrowed, her lips are pursed and she shakes her head before turning away.

Later, in Auto Shop, Dean asks Crystal if she’s going to Josh’s party.

Crystal snorts. “You’re kidding, right? The jocks don’t invite people like _me_ to their parties.”

Dean swipes his tongue around his lips. “They’re not so bad. Maybe you should give them a chance?”

Crystal’s eyebrows shoot up. “A chance to what? Humiliate me in public? Yeah, I don’t think so. Look, you’re a champion wrestler and you’re,” Crystal gestures at his face.

Dean frowns. “What?”

Crystal rolls her eyes. “You’re gonna make me say it? Fuck. You’re hot, alright? So it makes sense that they’d accept you,” she shrugs. “This is an inner city school district; a lot of us are from low income families, a lot of us get free lunches. Here, just being poor doesn’t make you an outcast. Being poor _and_ ugly _and_ a foster kid _and_ the daughter of a meth-whore _does_.”   

“You’re not ugly,” Dean says immediately.

Crystal isn’t conventionally ‘pretty’. She’s taller than he is and broad-shouldered, with a square face, a high forehead and a Roman nose. She’s not _dainty_. She’s tough and capable and Dean figures that most guys his age don’t know what to do with that.  

Crystal laughs. “Yeah, that’s why you started making out with me after knowing me for three days. No wait; that was _Jenny_. The hot cheerleader.”

“It’s complicated,” Dean says and Crystal gives him a bitchface that could rival any one of Sam’s.

“You boys are all the same,” she says. “God gave you enough blood to run your brain or your dick, but not enough to run ‘em both at the same time.”

Dean turns back to the Camaro he’s working on. There’s a lump in his throat and an ache in his chest, and he can’t even explain that’s he’s only hooking up with Jenny for the good of the Job he’s working. And even if he could explain, it would still make him sound like an asshole, using a girl’s feelings and body to get a job done.

Truthfully, after everything with Robin, Dean isn’t ready to move on. Making out with Jenny is nice. She’s a warm, female-shaped person and it’s physically enjoyable. But that’s all it is. There’s no emotional connection; no friendship. He doesn’t dislike her or anything; she’s an okay person, but he’s not sure he particularly likes her either. Crystal, he likes and her low opinion of him hurts. But… What if she’s right? What if this is some kind of _Carrie_ thing? The popular kids setting him up just to watch him fall? Dean shakes his head. He doesn’t believe that. His new friends all seem so genuine.

\--

By the time Dean and Sam get home from school their dad has gone to work. Dean makes them a snack and then, before Sam settles down to do his homework, Dean explains that he has to go to a party tonight, because it’s like, _the_ jock social event of the year and it’s a good opportunity to get to know everyone better, maybe find out if Josh is secretly holding witches’ coven meetings in his basement. Dean plans to leave at eight and Dad will be home by eleven and they’ve left Sam alone for longer than that for the good of a job before, so Dean figures he’ll be alright.

Sam says it’s okay, but he doesn’t look very happy about spending the evening alone.

Dean meets Jenny out the front of her house at eight thirty and they walk to Josh’s together.

Josh lives in a double-story white weatherboard with a small front yard. The house needs painting, but it’s a lot nicer than anywhere the Winchesters have lived in the last twelve years. Dean’s actually a little surprised, because he knows Josh lives with his mom and his two younger brothers, that his dad left them, and that his mom works part-time at Enzo’s Diner. They’re obviously doing alright for themselves, despite their difficult circumstances, and Dean is happy for them. 

The place is crowded, the music is pumping and Dean can smell beer, tobacco, weed and fried food. Josh pushes his way through the throngs of people and greets Dean with an enthusiastic handshake-hug.

“Hey, hey, Dean my man!” he shouts, voice booming over the music. “You made it! Now the party can _really_ get started!”

_He’s dressed in jeans and combat boots and his dad’s leather jacket. His face feels tights and when he wipes at his cheek, his hand comes away black. He sniffs. Charcoal. Two more steps and he’s at the top, on a landing that’s maybe twelve, maybe fourteen feet wide. He circles slowly, looking around. The brush of foot against stone alerts him and he turns, but not before he is seized by several men dressed in elaborate robes and headdresses._

_“Ixiptla,” one of them says. “It is time.”_

 

Dean wakes slowly. His tongue feels too big for his mouth, his head fuzzes and aches. He’s in bed, Sam is beside him, not in his trundle bed, and Dean doesn’t remember how he got here.

He sits slowly and takes stock. All up, he’s not too bad. A shower, some food and a couple of Tylenol and he’ll be fine.

His dad is sitting at the table by the window, watching him with narrowed eyes and the fact that he can’t remember getting home is suddenly worrying.

Dean clears his throat. “Hi,” he says.

“How do you feel?” his dad asks.

Dean tells him he feels fine and his dad harrumphs.

“Then would you mind telling me,” John Winchester says, his voice changing from concerned father to pissed drill sergeant, “just exactly what the hell you thought you were playing at last night?”

“Sure,” Dean tilts his head, thinks. “I went to a party.”

His Dad nods. “Yeah, I got that when I tracked your cell phone and found you passed out on a sofa at 2.00am in a house filled with drunk and stoned teenagers and _no parental supervision_.”

Oh boy. That calm, quiet tone was deceptive. His dad is _pissed_. Dean would love to make a snarky comment about the number of times he and Sam have been left alone (sometimes for days on end) with _no parental supervision_ , but he has still has some sense of self-preservation left so he doesn’t.

Dean squints and rubs at his forehead and tries to dredge up some memories of the night before, but it’s all such a blur. He has a hazy memory of…dancing? And drums. And a lot of barbecued meat. And cake. And some kind of weird drink being passed around that everyone drank through a metal straw. Dean rubs at the back of his neck and chews at his bottom lip. He remembers someone saying the drink was an Argentinian tradition, nothing narcotic, but then why did he black out? 

“Dean?” his dad prompts.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says. “I don’t really remember a lot of last night. Just…eating and dancing.”

“Did you take something? Smoke something? Snort something? Inject something?”

Dean shrugs. “I don’t think so. But there’s gotta be a reason I can’t really remember much.”

His dad stares at him. “I have to say I’m disappointed, Dean,” he says finally. “Firstly, you went out without my permission. And yes, Sam told me you went to this party for the good of the job, but you still should’ve run it past me first. And secondly…you were supposed to be working the job, not getting wasted. You were stupid and irresponsible, Dean and if I can’t trust you to,” he breaks off at the loud exasperated sigh from Sam.

Both Dean and his dad turn to look at him and Sam raises his chin.

“How do you know this is his fault?” Sam demands. “How do you know someone didn’t slip him something? Didn’t you say the murder victims had both been drugged? Maybe the murderer was at the party and he—or she—tried to make Dean the next victim?”

Dad looks at Dean expectantly, but Dean still can’t remember much and what he does remember, was just a typical teen party.

“I had a few beers,” he admits. “And there were people smoking weed. I don’t think I had any. But I did try some weird Argentinian drink and…I don’t really know what it was. It could’ve been highly narcotic for all I know, so…Dad’s right, Sammy, it’s my fault. I was an idiot.”

Dad’s wearing his supremely disappointed face again. Dean stares at the mustard-vomit quilt cover while his dad decides his fate; because there’s no way he’s not getting punished for this.

Dean is pretty thankful that his dad has always been the _drop and give me fifty_ kind of disciplinarian, because if his dad were the kind to get his belt out, Dean thinks he’d be in for a world of hurt right about now. As it is Dad triples his training regime and by the end of the day Dean has more than sweated out anything toxic in his system. He goes to bed that night feeling shaky and nauseated from the excessive PT, but when he wakes up the next day he feels good. Clear headed.

Jenny calls and wants him to meet up with the crew down at Taco Bell, but one look at his dad’s face tells him he’s not going anywhere, not even for the job, so Dean just tells her that he’s grounded. Apparently she’d already left by the time John Winchester stormed the place looking for Dean, but Josh had told her his dad was pretty scary, so she’s not exactly surprised. She does seem surprised that his old man cared enough to drag him home and Dean can’t help feeling a little hurt that she thinks his family would find him so easy to discard.


	2. Chapter 2

“Dean!” Jenny catches up with him by the lockers and hugs him tightly. “We missed you yesterday.”

Dean smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Wasn’t the party great?’ Jenny says.

Dean shrugs. “I don’t remember a lot of it.”

Her eyes widen. “Seriously? Wow. I guess you really can’t hold your liquor, huh?”

He totally can.

“Did we _do_ anything else?” he asks. “Something more than drink?”

She tilts her head and considers it. “I think someone was passing around a blunt, but I don’t know whether you smoked any of it. You’re okay though, right?”

Dean nods. “And what about that drink that got passed around? What was that?”

Jenny frowns. “What drink?”

“The one in the, like, saucepan thing, with the metal straw?”

Jenny’s eyebrows shoot up. “The _Yerba Mate_? It’s tea, Dean.”

Dean stares at her. “Tea?”

“Argentinian herbal tea. It’s good for you. Very healthy.”

“Healthy herbal tea. Wow. You guys really know how to party.”

Jenny giggles. “Seemed like you were having fun,” she puts her arms around his waist and snuggles in close. “You’re such an amazing kisser, Dean.”

Leaning down and kissing her seems to be the thing to do, so Dean does it.

Jenny’s grinning when she pulls away. “I’ve got something for you.”

She digs inside her pocket and pulls out a red leather bracelet.

“Friendship bracelets! I got one for each of us. I gave them out yesterday at Taco Bell, only you weren’t there so you get the red one. The rest of us have a sort of tan color,” she shows him the one on her wrist. “Aren’t they cool?”

Before he can respond, she’s fastening the bracelet around his wrist. “You like it right? Tell me you like it.”

“Yeah. It’s… Thanks.”

She beams.

\--

Dean doesn’t have an English paper to turn in and nor has he done his US history paper. He gets lectured by both teachers, but they seem reluctant to give him detention. Dean figures they’re giving him some leeway because he’s new.

There’s another picnic for lunch and Josh has brought some cake left over from his party. Dean learns that it’s a traditional Mexican cake called _Tres Leche_ and he eats a couple of big slices.

That afternoon he falls asleep in Algebra and that combined with the fact that he has no homework to turn in, does earn him a detention. Jenny’s really upset when she finds out, so Dean spends some time making out with her in the janitor’s closet and that seems to mollify her, a little.

Dean spends Tuesday lunchtime in Mr Lewis’s classroom completing all of his Algebra homework. He’s actually completely up-to-date by the end of lunch and Mr Lewis marks his work on the spot and grunts when he sees that it’s all correct.

He looks up at Dean and runs a hand over his chin.

“Mr Sanchez says you’ve got an important part to play in the Sports Departments’ success next year so I’m being strongly encouraged to go easy on you,” he pauses. “I can’t say that I approve of this notion that you jocks get a free pass because you’re good at sport. Just remember that you need something to fall back on and you’re obviously not stupid so…do your homework, okay?”

Dean nods and says _yessir_.

By the time he makes it out to the lockers, Jenny has already gone to class.

Of course, she corners him in the hallway after sixth period and begs him to come back to her place after school.

“My mom was making choc chip cookies this afternoon,” she says. “Please? I feel like I hardly saw you all day!”

Choc chip cookies sound good and truthfully, Dean’s feeling a little…restless. A little agitated and maybe not ready to go home and supervise Sam’s homework and figure out what to make for supper.

“Sure,” he says. “Sounds great.”

Sam can walk home from school by himself. He’s not a baby. He’ll be fine.

\--

Dean doesn’t spend a lot of time at the motel over the next week. He leaves Sam to fend for himself and spends all his spare time hanging out with Jenny and the crew, either at someone’s house or in the town. He stops doing homework altogether.

Jenny gives him a present for their two week anniversary – a pendant made from polished abalone shell, strung onto a black leather cord.

Jenny takes off the necklace that Dean usually wears—the amulet that Sam gave him for Christmas four years ago—and puts the abalone pendant around his neck in its place.

“There,” she beams. “So much cooler.”

Dean puts the old amulet in his pocket.

Sam is heating up Spaghettios when Dean gets back to the motel.

“Did you eat yet?” Sam asks.

“Yeah. Taco Bell.”

Sam nods. And then stares. “Where’s your amulet?”

Dean pulls is out of his pocket, waves it at Sam and then puts it on the table by the window.

“Jenny gave me this,” he says, touching the smooth shell.

Sam comes close and examines it. “I’ve seen something like this before,” he mutters. “In one of the books.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “You must’ve looked through half the mythology books in the entire state by now, Geek Boy.”

“Well you could do a bit more,” Sam snaps. “You’re meant to be our ‘undercover’ guy, but all you’re doing is hanging out with the jocks and making out with the cheerleaders! Have you even learned anything about the case?”

Sam’s right, of course, he really hasn’t done anything. It just…it hasn’t seemed important. All he’s wanted to do is hang out with his new friends and…that’s not really like him. He’s usually so focused when he’s on a job.

“I’ve been checking out everyone’s houses!” Dean defends. “To see if there’s any evidence they’re part of a coven.”

It’s…sort of true. He hasn’t looked hard, but he’s done the sort of cursory inspection he always does whenever he walks into somewhere new. Aside from a few paintings and sculptures that he thinks are based on Aztec mythology, Dean hasn’t really noticed anything unusual. And seeing as how quite a few of his friends have Mexican backgrounds, he figures that ain’t actually all that weird.

“And,” Dean adds. “I’m planning to break into Mr Sanchez’s office later tonight,”

He made that up on the spot, but it’s something he should’ve done a week ago, and now seems as good a time as any.

\--

Mr Sanchez’s office is a bust.  The only thing that makes Dean’s spidey sense tingle even a little is a headdress made from white feathers, and a staff, also decorated with white feathers, with a shiny black orb on top. But seeing as how he finds the items in a cupboard filled with pom poms and bits and pieces of Mascot costumes, he figures they don’t earn too many points on his own personal weird-o-meter. He goes through the rest of the offices in the Sports Department, but doesn’t find anything occult-like or obviously supernatural.

He gets back to the motel just as Dad’s arriving home from work, which earns him another lecture about getting permission before going out.

Dad doesn’t care that he was working the job. He’s still a kid; he needs to ask his dad first before he goes out to break into someone’s office for the good of a hunt. Blah, blah, blah.

Dean wonders if his dad would’ve cared this much if he’d found something. He rolls his eyes at his dad’s lecturing and the vein in his dad’s temple throbs.

“Get inside,” Dad grabs him by the scruff of the neck and pushes him into their motel room.

Sam is sitting up on his trundle bed, clutching his sheets, wide-eyed at all the shouting.

“Go to bed. And don’t even think about going anywhere this weekend. You’re grounded.”

Dean goes to bed, but his dad’s insane if he think Dean’s missing this weekend’s party at Jenny’s house. He has to be there. He can’t let her down; can’t let his friends down. The thought of doing so makes him feel physically sick.

Besides, his dad’s going to be working, so how’s he going to stop Dean from doing anything?

_He’s lying on an altar, dressed in his usual attire; jeans, leather jacket, combat boots. The room he’s in is filled with smoke, but he’s not worried. In the distance, through a glass darkly, he can see a jaguar pacing before an obsidian mirror. And then Jenny, Monique, Jacinta and Isabella come dancing through the fog wearing white dresses and veils. He sits up, resting on his forearms, and the girls swarm all over him, touching, kissing, and it feels so good._

The smoke clears and Dean’s on his back on the sofa at Jenny’s place. Jenny’s hand is inside his pants, pulling on his dick, Monique is rubbing her boobs against his face, Jacinta is kissing his thigh and he has a hand inside Isabella’s top. Dean freezes and tries to pull away. He’d been dreaming. It had been a dream. He’s not… this isn’t…

“More,” Jenny says and everything goes fuzzy.

_He’s definitely dreaming. The jaguar is back. And he is definitely lying on a stone altar, not a sofa. Everything is hazy though, and disjointed. Time seems to be distorting, shifting and moving in a confusing and unstable way. Jenny is riding him. There are fingers up his ass. His tongue is lapping at Monique’s clit. There’s a noise. Insistent. Persistent. Annoying. Something’s vibrating. He pushes Monique away and reaches into his pocket._

_“Hello?”_

“Fuck!”

Bodies scramble.

The smoke begins to clear and Dean blinks. Jenny’s on top of him, half naked, his pants are down and there’s come in his pubes. Shawn and the guys and the rest of the cheerleaders are in the living room too, all with bits of their clothing askew.

“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?” his Dad shouts down the cell phone. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”

Dean blinks again. His head is heavy. His mouth is dry. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on, but he feels compelled to answer his dad’s question as honestly as he can.

“I’m at a party, fucking a cheerleader.”

“Hang up, Dean,” Jenny whispers urgently.

Dean wants to obey her. But before he can his dad orders him to go home immediately and Dean is torn. The desire to do what Jenny wants is almost overwhelming, but he’s been obeying his dad for so much longer.

“Yessir,” he says, pressing end and putting the phone back in his pocket. “I have to go,” he lifts his hips and fastens his jeans.

“Let him go,” says a deep voice. Dean twists his head, but can’t see the speaker.

Everyone watches him leave.

The cool night air helps blow away the fog clouding Dean’s mind. Even so, he’s still not sure which of the things he remembers are real and which are just figments of a drug-induced dream.

The door to their motel room is snatched open before Dean can lay a hand on it. His dad hauls him into the room and then his back and shoulders are colliding with the motel wall, his dad’s hands fisted in his jacket.

“You were grounded!” his dad roars.

He pulls Dean forward and then slams him back against the wall again.

“What the hell were you thinking? What has gotten into you? Are you drunk again? High?”

Dean isn’t sure how to answer, so he shrugs. His dad backhands him, hard, and Dean’s head snaps to the side, his cheek throbbing.  His dad makes a pained noise and takes a step back, running a trembling hand over his mouth.

Dean blinks back tears.

“Get to bed,” John says finally. “Before I forget every promise I ever made your mother and tan your hide so raw you won’t be able to sit for a month.”

Dean doesn’t need to be told twice.

Sammy is in Dean’s bed again, not the trundle. He’s pale-faced with wide, worried eyes. Dean takes off his jacket and boots and gets in beside his brother, fully dressed. Sam stares at him for a moment and then turns his back.

Dean can’t sleep. He thinks he got into some pretty heavy fooling around with Jenny at the party, but fragments of a fading dream have left him unsettled, with the same kind of sour feeling in his gut that he gets whenever he’s had to suck dick for cash. Why is everything so hazy? Why can’t he remember exactly what he did? He gives up trying to sleep about five am and goes and takes a long hot shower. It helps a little. He feels cleaner when he steps out, but the bathroom is steamy and it triggers a memory of a stone altar and chicks dressed up like brides.

He doesn’t put the pendant from Jenny back on after his shower.

When he steps out of the bathroom, his dad is sitting at the table by the window, inventorying the First Aid Kit. He gestures at the seat opposite him when he sees Dean and Dean swallows and goes and sits in front of his dad.

“Are you mad at me?” John Winchester says. “Are you trying to punish me for leaving you at the boys’ home?”

Dean gapes. “No,” he hesitates.

The truth is that he’s scared; worried that the jocks and the cheerleaders are messing with him. That they roofied him and then…he shies away from naming what he thinks they might have done. He doesn’t want to speak his fears aloud. He doesn’t want his dad to think he’s weak.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I messed up.”

He’d rather be seen as a bad boy than as a victim.

He gets another lecture about what a disappointment he is and he gets grounded again, only this time his dad is going to call while he’s at work and he’s going to need to speak to both Dean and Sam. If Dean misses a call or can’t put Sam on the phone, he’s going to get a whooping, because his dad has had it with him.

“It’s not my job to be liked,” he says. “It’s my job to raise you right. And you’re way outta line right now, boy. Way outta line.” 

The Winchesters spend the day researching and putting together everything they’ve got, which isn’t much. Boys, drugged, murdered and partially eaten. Winning sporting teams. No overt signs of witches or Pagan God worship. Dean feels uneasy though, like he knows something that he can’t quite put his finger on.

Their dad stomps outside to make a call to Bobby Singer and Dean breathes a sigh of relief to be out from under his disapproving gaze. He leans back in his chair and cracks his back.

“Where’s your pendant?’ Sam says suddenly. “The one Jenny gave you,” he says her name with disdain.

Dean pulls it from his pocket and hands it to Sam. The moment it leaves his hand he feels lighter; brighter.

Sam examines the pendant, his brow furrowed and his lips pursed and then he places it carefully on the table.

Their dad comes back inside. “Bobby suggests we focus on the previous victims, see if they can lead us to whoever’s doing this,” he glares at Dean. “Seeing as how we haven’t been able to get anywhere looking at the Sports Department.”

“We don’t even know for sure the two things are connected,” Sam says. “Maybe the High School just has a really good Sports Program and lucked onto some really good athletes.”

“I don’t believe in co-incidences,” John growls.

Dean doesn’t either. Deep in his gut, he knows something is going on. Lately, when he’s with his friends, he loses huge chunks of time to fuzziness and confusion, but he has no memory of doing drugs; no logical reason for the haze—unless his friends are doing something to him.

He tries to say as much to his dad, but he can’t get the words out and this time, he doesn’t think it has anything to do with reluctance on his part. He vaguely remembers hearing something at Bobby’s once about witches being able to put some kind of magical command on a person that stopped them from talking about a particular thing. He wonders if someone’s done that to him.

Dean bites at his bottom lip. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the cheerleaders were witches,” he says.

His dad looks at him sharply and Dean shrugs. “Just sayin’.”

Because it’s as much as he can say.

Before he goes to bed that night, Dean puts on the amulet he got from Sam. Doing so eases a tension in his chest that he hadn’t even realised was there. 

_He’s punching Sammy and punching Sammy and Sammy’s on the ground, can’t get up. He feels dead inside. Cold and dead and he wants everything to just be over._

_“Okay,” Sammy says, holding up a trembling hand. “Okay. Enough.”_

_Sammy tries to tell him that he’s good. That he’s a good man. He doesn’t believe him. How can he be good when he’s about to kill his brother?_

_His vision blurs._

_He has a scythe in his hand. He swings it._

 

Dean wakes up screaming. Sam’s on his knees, beside him on the bed, his eyes glassy with tears.

“No!” Dean throws himself at Sam, hugs him fiercely. “I won’t do it!”

And then his Dad’s there, pulling him away, looking into his eyes.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

“He was having a nightmare,” Sam says tearfully. “I couldn’t wake him up. He was making really horrible noises, like a wounded animal.”

His dad fixes him with a stern gaze and demands to know what he was dreaming about, but the kicker is, Dean can’t remember. Not exactly. He frowns. Like so many of his dreams lately, he’s left with nothing but a vague uneasy sense that he’d been dreaming of doing bad things; of having bad things done to him.

He shakes his head. “I don’t remember,” he says. “I think…I think someone wanted me to hurt Sammy.”

It’s the closest he can get and it doesn’t even begin to encapsulate the horror that he’d felt immediately upon waking; as if he’d just done something absolutely unforgivable.

Sam tattles on him, tells their dad that Dean’s been having a lot of nightmares and weird dreams lately and his dad presses him for details, but Dean can’t give them.  

Later, just as he’s about to fall asleep again, with Sam once again tucked in beside him and not on the trundle bed, he murmurs. “There was a leopard in some of them. And smoke.”

\--

Jenny is a lot more pissed than he expected that he’s not wearing the pendant she gave him. In fact, she makes quite a scene about it at the lockers and Dean ends up losing his temper and backing her against the lockers and yelling at her. She seems more surprised than scared and she stares at his amulet—the one he got from Sam—with narrowed eyes.

“That one’s lame and ugly,” she spits. “Only a loser would wear something like that.”

And that’s when Mr Sanchez gets in between them and pushes Dean away from Jenny.

“Alright, show’s over. Get to class,” he tells the assembled sophomores. “You too, Jenny.”

She goes, with a tremulous, tearful look at Dean.

Mr Sanchez regards Dean silently for a moment and then sighs and shakes his head. “Come with me.”

Dean follows the Head of the Sports Department to his office and takes a seat when told to. Dean’s expecting a lecture about his behaviour in the hall, so he’s taken aback completely when Mr Sanchez tells him that he’s been caught on the school’s security tapes going through faculty offices last Friday evening.

To be honest, Dean had completely forgotten that he’d even done that and he sits gaping at Mr Sanchez, not sure what to say.

“You didn’t take anything,” Mr Sanchez says. “You seemed to be looking for something. What was it?”

“’Roids,” Dean says promptly. “To sell. For money. Didn’t find any.”

Mr Sanchez sits back and watches him thoughtfully, hands steepled in front of his face.

“Money’s pretty tight at home, huh?” he says finally.

Dean nods.

Mr Sanchez sighs. “I should call the police.”

Dean stiffens. He’s enroled here under his real name, and he’s fairly certain that a break and enter charge so soon after his stint at Sonny’s would be epically bad.

“I’m not going to,” Mr Sanchez adds. “We’ll handle this inhouse.”

That sounds pretty ominous and Dean is suddenly very thankful that New York is not a paddling state. Mr Sanchez lets him stew for a moment and then takes him to see the Guidance Counselor.

He leaves Dean standing outside her office while he goes in for a chat with her and then Dean is summoned.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Mr Sanchez says.

Dean looks at the Guidance Counselor’s name plate as he sits down: _Ms Sanchez_. Huh.

“Any relation to Mr Sanchez?” he asks.

“We’re married. Tell me about your home life.”

Dean has done this dance with countless counselors, teachers and social workers over the years—Crystal was right about that. He’s good at it too. He spends the next fifteen minutes earnestly giving her absolutely squat and he’s surprised when she finally sits back with a laugh and tells him he’d make a good politician.

“Interesting necklace,” she says.

Dean’s eyebrows rise at the abrupt change of topic. “Thanks. My little brother gave it to me for Christmas a few years back.”

Ms Sanchez nods. “It’s a Mesopotamian Bullman, if I’m not mistaken. Quite a powerful protective charm.”

Dean’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline. “I don’t believe in that stuff. My brother just thought it looked cool.”

Ms Sanchez smiles. “I don’t ‘believe in that stuff’ either, but mythology is a bit of a hobby of mine.”

“Right,” Dean glances around the room, his eyes settling on a painting of a giant winged snake. “That looks pretty mythological.”

Ms Sanchez turns to the painting in question and nods. “Yes, that’s Quetzecolal, one of the most important Gods in the Aztec pantheon. He’s often portrayed as a feathered serpent, as you see in the painting.”

Dean nods. “Cool.”

There’s a moment’s silence and then Ms Sanchez tells him that he’s going to spend every lunchtime this week in detention in her office and that on Thursday, after school, he’s going to take part in the Sports Department’s end of year clear out and working bee.

All up, Dean figures it could’ve been worse.

\--

He’s late to Auto Shop, but Ms Sanchez gave him a tardy slip so he gives that to Doug and then goes to his usual car.

“You okay?” Crystal asks.

Dean nods.

Crystal’s lips thin, but she doesn’t say anything, just goes back to changing spark plugs; her shoulders rigid with tension.

“C’mon then,” Dean says. “Spit it out. Let me have it.”

Crystal turns back to him with a sigh. “It’s just. I’m worried about you. The longer you’re with Jenny the less happy you get. And then this morning,” she shakes her head. “That’s not you.”

“You don’t really know me,” Dean says.

“Maybe not,” Crystal says. “But I’ve only ever seen you be kind and respectful with girls. And sometimes, like at lunch or between classes, I see Jenny being really bossy and bullying and you just go along with what she wants.”

 “What the hell?” Dean interrupts. “Jenny’s not bullying me!”

Crystal raises one eyebrow. “Yeah. She is. And you usually just go along meekly with what she wants, like some kind of puppet. So if she’s made you unhappy enough to lash out like you did this morning, then she must’ve really crossed the line. So why are you still with her?” She frowns. “She’s not paying you is she?”

Dean’s eyes widen. “For fuck’s sake Crystal!” he hisses. And then more quietly. “No, she’s not paying me. But she’s a cheerleader. And I’m gonna be on the wrestling team. And it’s kind of like an unwritten rule that the jocks date the cheerleaders.”

Crystal shakes her head. “Isn’t it more important to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and like the guy you see?”

Dean laughs, low and ugly. “I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen, Crystal.”

She reaches out a hand and Dean jerks back, away from her touch.

“You’re a good person, Dean,” she says.

“No. I’m really not.”

“Yes you are. I’ve seen you with your brother. You--”

She breaks off when Dean snarls. “You don’t know me,” he says. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. Just…leave me alone.”

\--

Detention with Ms Sanchez isn’t bad. He’s on the free lunch list and the Guidance Counselor says it would be cruel and unusual punishment to deny him sustenance so she brings his lunch to her office and they eat together. Dean thinks it’s a little weird, but then what would he know? A lot of the things normal people do seem weird to him.

After they’ve eaten Ms Sanchez works on her computer and he does homework. As lunchtime progresses he feels himself getting more and more lethargic.

That evening, back at the motel, he tries to tell Sam about Quetzecolal, but can’t. He can’t even write the name down, so he figures he’s on the right track, both with that whole magical injunction thing and with the god they’re dealing with. Frustrated, he goes through all of the books they’ve been using for research until he finds one on Aztec Mythology. He looks up Quetzecolal and learns that he’s a creation god who takes the form of a serpent and who is associated with fertility. All pretty standard stuff and nothing about blood sacrifices or anything.  Damn. He’d been so sure he was on the right track.

The next day at school, Jenny apologizes to him. She tells him she was just really hurt that he ditched her present so soon after they’d been together. She blushes when she says it and imbues the words _been together_ with a lot of meaning.

Dean’s blood goes cold. Does she mean what he thinks she means? He doesn’t remember. The thought that he might have…and he doesn’t remember…it makes him feel sick. He fakes a smile at her apology and goes to class. His head’s a mess of turmoil through all his morning classes and it’s actually a relief that he has detention, because it gives him a legitimate excuse not to see Jenny.

Ms Sanchez brings him his lunch again. He works on his homework again. When he walks out of her office he’s exhausted and fuzzy-headed. He goes to the restroom and splashes cold water on his face.

And freezes when he realizes that his amulet has gone.

He spends the rest of the day in a daze.

He makes supper for Sam. He showers. And he tries really hard to resist the compulsion to put the pendant from Jenny back on, but he can’t.  As soon as the shell pendant settles against his chest, he feels drained of all will.

Dean spends the whole of Wednesday feeling like a zombie. He goes to school, he sits quietly in class and does his school work, he goes to detention. Ms Sanchez smiles at his silent obedience and apparent lack of will. Dean feels trapped inside his own skull; he rages in his head and shakes at the bars, but he’s a prisoner inside his own mind.

The last class of the day is Auto Shop and Dean always brings his backpack with him, because the workshop is on the far side of the school, in the direction he has to walk to get Sam, and having his bag with him saves having to walk back to the lockers. Besides, Doug is pretty cool. If they finish their work early, he often lets them leave early. Today, he and Crystal get out five minutes before the bell goes and they walk to the Middle School together.

“Why the escort?” Dean wants to know. “Don’t you have something better to do?”

Crystal rolls her eyes. “You’ve been weird today. Weirder than normal. I just wanna make sure you get to Sam okay.”

Sam is out promptly, his eyes flashing with relief when he sees his brother, and Dean feels a stab of guilt for all the afternoons he bailed on his little brother to hang out with his so-called friends.

“Hey Crystal,” Sam says warmly.

Dean tilts his head and Crystal ducks hers.

“I may have walked home with Sam a few times,” she confesses. “It’s just…we’ve both been really worried about you.”

Sam is wearing the beseeching lost puppy expression that gets him an extra-large slice of pie in diners all around the country.

“We want you to come and talk to Gavin.”

Dean frowns. Gavin? Who the hell is Gavin? A vague memory of paper cups filled with orange juice worms its way into his brain and Dean stops walking abruptly.

Hell, no. He looks at Sammy and then Crystal. “This is an intervention?” he says, his voice high with disbelief. “You guys think I’m doing drugs?”

“The signs are all there,” Crystal begins.

Dean’s phone rings and Sam snatches it out of his backpack before Dean can even get to it.

“Who is it?” Dean asks. “Is it Dad?”

Because if it’s Dad he has to answer or his ass is literally on the line.

Sam shakes his head. “It’s Jenny. And you don’t need to talk to her. She’s bad news.”

Dean looks from Sam to Crystal. “You guys think she got me hooked on drugs.”

 “You’ve been different since you started going out with Jenny,” Sam says.

“And I know the signs,” Crystal says. “You swing between restless and agitated and half asleep. You’re like a junkie who gets his fix and then goes on the nod. And most of the time you just go along with whatever Jenny and her friends want, like you’ve got no mind of your own.”

Dean wants to scream at them. _I am in trouble, you idiots. Just not the sort of trouble you’re thinking._

But he can’t say a word. Whatever they’ve done to him, whatever spell they’ve cast, it won’t let him speak up.

“I can’t tell you anything,” he says. “I want to, but I can’t.”

“Did they threaten you?” Crystal asks.

Dean shakes his head and frowns. He can’t tell them what’s going on, but there are things the magical injunction _has_ let him say. He fixes Sam with his most earnest expression.

“You guys think I’m doing drugs,” he repeats, “ _voluntarily_?”

Sam stares at him, brow furrowed. “Voluntarily?” he echoes. “Wait… _what_? Are you…are they…?”

And then Shawn’s truck comes roaring around the corner and comes to a screaming stop beside them. Josh and Jason leap out and grab Dean by the arms.

“You gotta come with us,” they say and Dean feels compelled to obey.

“Dean, wait!” Sam and Crystal try to pull him back, but they’re not strong enough.

“Sammy!” Dean calls out desperately. “They took your Christmas present off me.”

He’s bundled into the truck and the door is slammed shut behind him.

“Fuck!” Sam runs a hand through his bangs as he watches the truck hurtle down the road. “Fucking, _fuck_!”

He still has Dean’s phone in his (shaking) hand, so he uses it to call his father.

“Dad, we’ve got a situation. Dean just got kidnapped. And I think I was right. I think his friends have been drugging him. And Dad? It’s May 22nd tomorrow. That’s when the other two victims were reported missing.”

\--

Crystal wants to call the police, but John explains to her that he’s a bounty hunter and he’ll take care of it himself. Crystal nods and Sam is thankful they’re once again living in the kind of neighbourhood where people understand the desire to keep the cops out of things. She’s not thrilled when Dad thanks her for keeping Sam company and makes it clear he expects her to leave. In fact, she digs her heels in and insists that she can help find Dean, because she knows the area better than they do as well as the kids who seem to be involved. Sam can see the tic in his dad’s jaw and he knows that he’s not happy, but his dad is also impatient to get things moving and doesn’t want to waste time arguing with a teenage girl.

“Fine,” John says finally. He picks up the piece of paper on which Sam had written the truck’s registration number. “I’m going to track the people involved. Sam, I want you to keep researching what it is we’re dealing with. Dean said they took his amulet, so focus on the pendant they replaced it with. And, uh, rituals that involve drugging someone. And,” he waves a hand at Crystal, “ask her questions about their overall behavior with Dean. We really need to know whether we’re dealing with a coven of witches or a pagan god as soon as possible.”

Beside him, Sam hears Crystal gasp.

His dad shoots her an annoyed look. “Call me as soon as you know anything,” he tells Sam.

“Your dad is insane,” Crystal says as soon as the door shuts behind John Winchester.

Sam sighs. “Monsters are real. We hunt them. I wish it wasn’t true, but it is. You can believe me or you can think we’re crazy, I don’t care. Just…help me get my brother back.”

Crystal narrows her eyes and studies Sam for a moment and then nods. “Okay. You want to know what sort of stuff I saw Dean doing with his friends?”

Sam nods. “Especially anything unusual or odd.”

Crystal frowns and tilts her head. “The only thing that was a bit weird was the lunches. They always used to have these awesome picnic lunches together. Lots of traditional Mexican food. And, uh, the way they treated Dean…it was like…they expected him to do whatever they wanted, but, uh, also like he was important? It’s hard to describe, but it was weird.”

“Okay. That might help.”

Mexico is the home of the Aztecs and they were a pretty blood thirsty bunch of dudes, so Sam figures it’s worth researching. He finds the book on Aztec culture and mythology that they got out of the library. It’s lying open at the page about Quetzecolal and Sam remembers seeing Dean looking at it the other day. A shiver runs through him. Had Dean left this the book open at this page deliberately? Was it a clue? His brother had said that he _couldn’t_ tell them what was going on. Maybe he meant that literally. Maybe the witches had put a _geis_ on him; a supernatural injunction that prevented him from talking about the ritual or anything associated with it.

Sam scans the information about Quetzecolal, but he doesn’t seem to demand human sacrifice, so Sam flips to the glossary and skims over the Aztec pantheon as a whole, looking for a likely candidate.

“Sam?” Crystal says. “Can you hear that?”

“Huh?”

“That noise? Someone…someone’s calling my name. I…”

Crystal trails off and falls silent.

_Tezcatlipoca,_ Sam reads. _Often translated as Smoking Mirror. A major Aztec deity often associated with discord, divination, prophecy, temptation, jaguars, sorcery, beauty, war and strife._

Sam’s stomach clenches. Dean had mentioned dreaming about a leopard. He’d been having bad dreams lately.

_Tezcatlipoca’s main festival_ , Sam reads, _was the Toxcatl ceremony celebrated in the month of May._

Sam’s blood runs cold and he flips pages hastily, without his usual respect for the leaves of a book, until he gets to the chapter on Tezcatlipoca and his rituals and ceremonies. There’s a picture of a young man, dressed like a warrior. He’s wearing the same pendant that Jenny gave to Dean.

Sam swallows and begins to read.

_Tezcatlipoca’s main feast was during Toxcatl, the fifth month of the Aztec calendar. [May] The preparations began a year earlier, when a young man was chosen by the priests to be the likeness of Tezcatlipoca. This individual was called the ixiptla or "deity impersonator" and was chosen to ceremonially represent the god to the Aztec people. Ixiptla were usually selected from among captive warriors and for the next year he lived like a god, wearing expensive jewelry and having eight attendants. For one year he lived a life of honor, the handsome young man was worshipped literally as the embodiment of the deity. The young man would spend his last week singing, feasting and dancing and would then be wed to four young women, also chosen in advance and isolated for a full year and treated as goddesses. During the final feast where he was worshipped as the deity he personified, he climbed the stairs to the top of the temple on his own where the priests seized him. He was then sacrificed, his body being eaten later in a sacred ritual._

Sam is fairly certain he started hyperventilating halfway through the passage on Tezcatlipoca’s main feast and he only vaguely notices Crystal saying “Yes,” in a loud clear voice.

“What?” he says turning to her, just in time to see a column of light descend and then spread out and surround Crystal. Her head snaps back and her arms fling out, like Jesus on the Cross and when the light finally disburses and Crystal straightens up, the look in her eyes is utterly alien.

“…Crystal?” Sam says tentatively.

“No,” says Crystal.

She inclines her head like a bird of prey and examines him closely. “Sam Winchester.”

She glances down at the book on the table. “You have made good progress. Dean Winchester has indeed been compromised by Tezcatlipoca. There are claim markers in his soul and this is unacceptable. We have plans for Dean Winchester. He is ours.”

“Who… _what_ are you?” Sam asks.

Crystal…or whoever…tilts her head. “That is not of import. The disciples of Tezcatlipoca are holding your brother in the storage basement of the local High School. We…I…cannot enter. The place is heavily warded against our kind. Your father must retrieve him.”

Sam stares at Crystal.

Crystal stares back, her wide eyes unblinking. “Time is of the essence, Sam Winchester,” she says after a long moment of silence. “You must save your brother.”

Sam licks at his lips and then nods once and picks up Dean’s cell phone.

“It’s Tezcatlipoca,” he says as soon as his dad answers. “They’re going to sacrifice Dean. They’re in the storage basement at the high school. And that pendant is definitely involved somehow.”

“How do you know where they are?” John asks, his tone suspicious.

Sam explains about the pillar of light that had just possessed Crystal and his dad demands to know if the salt lines are broken and then tells Sam to throw holy water on Crystal.

Crystal sighs. “Salt does not affect my kind,” she walks to John Winchester’s duffle bag and pulls out the holy water flask and tips some of the liquid onto her hand. “Nor does Holy Water.”

Sam relays the results to his dad who grunts. “Okay,” John says finally. “What this entity told you matches what I’ve learned myself, so I’m going to give it the benefit of the doubt. You stay there. And don’t let ‘Crystal’ leave.”

Crystal sits down on the chair opposite Sam and tilts her head as if she’s listening to something. Sam doesn’t think it’s within his power to stop ‘Crystal’ from doing anything, but he’ll do his best.

\--

The girls are dressed as brides again and the guys are all in loin clothes. Dean’s in his regular clothes, his face smeared with charcoal, and he’s dancing. The drum beat is wild, the flutes high-pitched and insistent, bodies press together in an ecstasy of movement, writhing sinuously, and the excitement in the air is palpable.   

Dean has no will of his own. If he did, he would be high-tailing it out of there, fast.

Mr Sanchez is there, dressed in what look like priestly robes. He’s wearing a headdress of white turkey feathers and carrying a staff topped with an obsidian orb; so much for discounting that as part of a Mascot costume.

When Dean and the guys had first arrived, Dean had taken a good look at everyone who had gathered to worship whatever Aztec Deity was being worshipped here. Not everyone was Hispanic. Some were, certainly, but there were also white, Asian, and African American worshippers; some students and teachers who Dean recognized from school and some people who he didn’t recognize.

“Tezcatlipoca!” people began to cry, when Dean arrived. “In his name!”

So not Quetzecolal, then. His brother. Damn. Dean had been close.

Dean had been handed over to Sanchez while the guys went and changed into their loin clothes and then there was a massive feast. Dean was hand-fed from a special platter and the more he ate, the woozier and more compliant he became. Sanchez made Dean kneel and wiped charcoal all over his face. He thanked Dean for his sacrifice, called him _Ixiptla_ and told him that by rights, he should’ve been feted for a full year, but that just wasn’t possible in this day and age and they’d had to adjust the ritual; shorten the time frames; adapt and adjust for the modern era.

Sanchez sounded quite aggrieved and Dean supposed that was fair enough, in a way. Colonization always had a devastating effect on indigenous populations and even though Tezcatlipoca wasn’t a New York native, it wasn’t like he’d been brought across from Europe. Nowadays, Tezcatlipoca obviously had to make do with whatever worshippers he could drum up, and he clearly had to settle for low fat, low sodium, light ‘n’ easy sacrifices too. 

That was probably a real bummer for him, Dean thought scathingly.

“We will sing and dance now,” Sanchez said, “and then, I will open the hatch that leads to the stadium above, and you will climb the stairs, into the arena, and then up onto the podium, where you will be gifted to He by whom we live. Once again, the success of Tezcatlipoca’s worshippers will be guaranteed for another year.”

So Dean is dancing, not fleeing. He’s trying desperately to regain control of himself, but he can’t. He’s going to die and he can’t do anything to stop it. In fact, he’s going to walk himself right to his own murder with a fucking smile on his face and there’s nothing he can do about it.

The music stops and Dean stops dancing, like a puppet whose strings have been cut.  

Sanchez makes another speech. Something about Smoking Mirrors and jaguars and ensuring the harvest is good, although ‘harvest’ in this case is not so much agricultural as it is each family making good money and having success in all their endeavours.  

The trapdoor up into the stadium is slowly lowered and the drums start to beat once again.

“Thank you, Dean,” Jenny says, bringing his hand up to her lips and kissing his knuckles. She rubs her fingers against the friendship band she gave him and if he could’ve, Dean would’ve snorted. Friends don’t let friends get sacrificed to pagan gods.

Jenny stands on tip-toe and leans up, kissing his lips gently. Dean tries his hardest not to respond.

“You’re the most beautiful sacrifice we’ve ever had,” Jenny says when she pulls away. “Tezcatlipoca is sure to be pleased and next year will be a bountiful one, thanks to you.”

“I wouldn’t count on it, sweetheart,” says John Winchester.

There’s the sound of a shot gun being cocked and there’s his father, standing confidently in the doorway, with his gun trained on Mr Sanchez.

“The police are on their way,” John says. “Now, take that pendant off my son.”

Jenny looks across at Mr Sanchez who is staring dumbly at John Winchester.

“I’m a Hunter,” his dad says. “I can and will shoot you dead.”

Sanchez nods at Jenny and she removes the abalone pendant with shaking fingers. Free will rushes back into Dean like an avalanche. Jenny glances down at the friendship bracelet and Dean follows her gaze.

“Get this off me too,” Dean tells her, shaking his wrist.

Jenny frowns and grits her teeth.

“Go ahead, Jenny,” Sanchez says.

Jenny unfastens the bracelet and takes it off his wrist.

“Okay,” John says. “I’m going to give you to the count of three to send my son over to me and then I’m going to start shooting. One. Two.”

Sanchez nods and Dean walks slowly toward Ms Sanchez and stops in front of her. “I want my amulet back.”

“It’s in my desk drawer,” she says.

“Dean,” his father says impatiently and Dean goes obediently to his side.

Together they back out of the room, the sound of sirens getting louder and closer.

\--

Dean is taken to hospital where he learns that the drugs in his system are ancient herbal compounds, designed to make him docile and obedient.

The cake that was served at the final feast contained a lot of the drug. So too did the smoky incense that was being pumped around. Dean also knows that the amulet and the friendship bracelet were helping to keep him compliant; he figures there were probably enchantments on them. He got his dad to retrieve his amulet from Ms Sanchez’s desk drawer before they allowed themselves to be rescued by the cops. He felt a lot better the second he put it around his neck, so maybe Ms Sanchez was right about it offering powerful protection.

The cops were pissed at Dad for going in alone to rescue Dean, even after he showed them his bounty hunter ID, but they did agree that in his situation they would’ve probably done the same thing. 

Dean is kept in the hospital overnight. Sammy sleeps in Dean’s hospital bed beside him, on top of the blankets, with Dad’s coat over him, which the nurses seem to have decided is cute, so no-one tries to move him. Dad keeps vigil in the straight backed chair beside the bed. It’s fairly obvious from his body language and the expression on his face that the term ‘visiting hours’ doesn’t apply to him and nobody even bothers to suggest that he leave.

The police stop by again the next day and tell them that traces of blood from the last two murder victims were found on the podium where Mr Sanchez had told Dean he would be sacrificed. Everyone seems to be blaming the Sanchezes. The other adults involved are all saying they didn’t realise at first how far the Sanchezes would take things, and by the time they realised, they were in too deep to get out. Dean thinks that’s bullshit. He thinks they liked the rewards and were willing to pay the price. The kids all had small traces in their blood of the same drugs that were in Dean’s. Not enough to control them as Dean was controlled, but certainly enough to influence them. The media has started referring to the Sanchezes as the leaders of an ‘Aztec Murder Cult.’  Thankfully, the police are keeping Dean’s name and identity out of it. 

The next day, the doctors decide that Dean can go home. The decision was strongly encouraged by Dean and his dad, neither of whom are fans of hospitals. The best Dean can say about his hospital stay is that at least the nurses were mostly hot.

Back at the motel, Dean’s dad tucks him into bed with a plate of cheese toasties and a bowl of tomato soup. Even without the rice, it’s pretty good. Sam sits curled up beside him while John packs things up, returns library books and makes arrangements for them all to go and stay at Bobby’s for a while.

“You knew didn’t you?” Sam says when Dad leaves to go to the library. “You knew they were doing something to you, but you literally couldn’t talk about it. They put a _geis_ on you, right?”

“Yeah,” Dean nods. Now that Sam’s mentioned it, Dean’s pretty sure that’s what Bobby had called the magical injunction thing. “It got me thinking, though. We should have, like, code words. In case we can’t say what we really mean. It might not be because of a…a _geis_ , sometimes we might not want to talk in front of cops or bad guys or whatever. What do you think?”

Sam thinks it’s a good idea, so Dean comes up with _Funkytown_ for if someone’s got a gun on them and Sam suggests _Poughkeepsie_ for drop everything and run.  Dean’s ruminating on a strategy they can use to find each other if they ever get split up, when there’s a knock on the front door.

It’s Crystal.

“Hi,” she says. “I just wanted to see how you were,” she holds out a small white box. “I brought you pie.”

Dean’s eyes light up. “Thank you! Pie is my favorite. Which is just as well, because I don’t think I’m going to be able to even look at cake ever again.”

Sam gets spoons and they all dig in, eating the apple and cinnamon pie straight out of the box.

“How are you, Crystal?” Sam asks.

Crystal toys with her pie. “I’m okay,” she glances up at Dean. “There was a voice. It said it could save your life if I just said yes. So I said yes. And after that…I don’t remember anything until I woke up in my own bed,” she shakes her head. “I’m pretty freaked, to be honest. But I’m glad you’re okay, Dean.”

Dad gets back not long after they finish the pie. He finishes packing up the car and settles up with the motel manager and then they say good-bye to Crystal and put Poughkeepsie in their rear view mirror.

Dean doesn’t think he’s ever been so pleased to get out of town before. He’s in the back of the impala with Sam, a pile of blankets and snacks. Usually he’s up front, navigating, and it’s nice to be able to just relax.

Leaving Jenny behind is easy. In fact, Dean thinks it would’ve been easy even if she hadn’t turned out to be human-sacrificing, pagan god-worshipping bitch. He’d cared about Robin. Putting her in his rear view mirror had hurt. The trick, Dean decides, is to stay detached. If you don’t let yourself care about anything other than a short-term good time, then you don’t get hurt.   

From now on, that’s what he’s going to do. Kiss them and leave them, no strings attached.

“Can we have some music, Dad?” he asks.

John digs around in his box of cassette tapes and finally puts on _Seventh Son of a Seventh Son_. Dean’s not usually a huge fan of metal, but Iron Maiden are all right and Sammy likes them.

_I screamed aloud to the old man_

_I said don't lie, don't say you don't know_

_I say you'll pay for this mischief_

_In this world or the next_

_Oh and then he fixed me with a freezing glance_

_And the hell fires raged in his eyes_

_He said you wanna know the truth son?_

_Lord, I'll tell you the truth_

_Your soul's gonna burn in a lake of fire_

_Listen to me, said the prophet_

_Can I play with madness?_

 

Dean falls asleep and dreams of a blue-eyed man with shadowed wings dragging him from a pit of burning sulphur. It doesn’t feel like a nightmare; it feels like a revelation.


	3. Epilogue

Castiel appears before Barachiel, the Angel who commands the Guardian Seraphs.

“Castiel,” says Barachiel. “Thank you for stepping in at such short notice.”

“It is my pleasure to serve,” Castiel replies. “It is fortunate that there was a suitable vessel for me to inhabit.”

Castiel thinks his tone is polite, but Barachiel looks at him sharply, so perhaps some of his scepticism has bled through. There is, after all, an entire host of Guardian Seraphs. Why they should need a soldier to step in is beyond him.

Then again, he did have to have some fairly stern words with Tezcatlipoca to get him to relinquish the claim markers in The Michael Sword’s soul; so perhaps a solider was needed after all.

Tezcatlipoca had not been pleased, to say the least. He had called The Michael Sword the most beautiful, most fitting, sacrifice he’d been offered in quite some time. As a god of prophecy and divination, Tezcatlipoca had been feasting on The Michael Sword’s destiny with relish. Sadly, Castiel did not get to meet The Michael Sword, although he did get to meet Lucifer’s vessel.

“You _will_ meet him, Castiel,” says Barachiel. “You have an important role to play in the upcoming Battle,” he pulses with celestial intent; the angelic version of a smile. “You won’t remember this conversation, my friend, but you are the proverbial spanner in the works. God’s own little fly in the ointment. Now go. For you shall soon have work to do.”

The End.

**Original Art Prompt:** **  
Title:** **I was a teenage dirtbag**

 

And here's a temporary banner created by me, due to some technical difficulties we experienced which delayed the proper banner from being deployed... 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you've enjoyed the story, I'd love to hear from you. :) 
> 
> Thanks as always to my beta reader Endlessevelina, to Jennpbj for the inspiring art prompt, and to the SPN Reversebang mods for running such a fabulous challenge!


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